Wednesday, May 08, 2019

Over the moon

No one was mooned in the making of this post.




Retirement offers more time to read. My completion rate on books is not that high but improving. Recently I finished “The Book of the Moon” by self-named lunatic, Maggie Aderin-Pocock. I completed the whole book but compared to most books it's a smaller one. An easy read that still provides plenty of information about our moon. It’s not overly technical.

One thing I learned was that the moon is receding from us and that the Earth’s spin is slowed by the moon. Go back a billion year and you would experience about a 23 hour day. You also would starve since multicellular life was just beginning. The moon stabilizes Earth’s spin.

While not explicitly covered in this book, I credit the moon with advancing human knowledge. It gives us a noticeable object to track, measure time, and wonder about. Solar and lunar eclipses are nature’s experiments for us to observe and study. The night sky would be duller without those waxing and waning phases.

Without the moon we would have never heard the song “Moon River”. I found a few Moon River covers on youtube. I’ll start with a favorite since I’m fan of Eric Clapton. (Oh I also learned that Georgia’s politicians honored Johnny Mercer by renaming the Back River, the Moon River.)







I was a bit surprised to find a parody called "Joan Rivers".  (the parody starts about half minute into the clip)





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